In July 2006, Cory Doctorow published an analysis of the anti-competitive nature of Apple's iTunes copy-restriction system which looked at the benefits of restrictive DRM for the company that controls the DRM. The only reason I can imagine why Microsoft would put its programmers, device vendors, third-party developers, and ultimately its customers, through this much pain is because once this copy protection is entrenched, Microsoft will completely own the distribution channel. In the same way that Apple has managed to acquire a monopolistic lock-in on their music distribution channel (an example being the Motorola ROKR fiasco, which was so crippled by restrictions that a Fortune magazine senior editor reviewed it as the STNKER), so Microsoft will totally control the premium-content distribution channel. In fact examples of this Windows content lock-in are already becoming apparent as people move to Vista and find that their legally-purchased content won't play any more under Vista (the example given in the link is particularly scary because the content actually includes a self-destruct after which it won't play any more, so not only do you need to re-purchase your content when you switch from XP to Vista, but you also need to re-purchase it periodically when it expires. In addition and since the media rights can't be backed up, if you experience a disk crash you get another opportunity to re- purchase the content then). It's obvious why this type of business model makes the pain of pushing content protection onto consumers so worthwhile for Microsoft since it practically constitutes a license to print money.

Microsoft have been saying for some years now that they'd really like the PC to go away, to turn into a kind of media center and content-distribution center for consumers. Windows MCE has been the tail and of a long line of (unsuccessful) attempts to achieve this (the only reason why MCE seems to sell at all is because it's the cheapest version of Windows that vendors can pre- install on a PC). If “premium content” ever takes off, Microsoft wants to be the central controller of all content distribution and playback — only Windows can secure the content, therefore only Windows can distribute it. Even the term “premium content” is misleading: in a few years' time, most audio and video will be produced in some form of HD format, at which point “premium content” becomes normal, and so everything is subject to content protection.

http://www.freeos.com/articles/4805/

Some applications have been ported over to Linux, other run with a program called WINE (Wine is Not an Emulator). Crossover, commercially available software also lets you use your Windows programs on Linux. VMWare is another program that lets you run Windows under Linux. Now many software companies have started developing high end software for Linux.